In the Business of Selling Love

Yesterday, I saw a little girl selling a single rose in Delhi’s traffic. She was trying so hard, hoping that at least someone would buy that flower. By the time she reached me, the signal turned yellow, and she knew she had to rush back to the divider. The way she ran through the traffic, her little dupatta flying behind her, she looked like a supergirl,flying through all the chaos! In that moment it was like, she felt free, free from the weight of responsibilities placed on her little shoulders. And at that exact moment, I remembered something….or someone.

It was January last year. I was in my hometown, Chittagong, camera in my hand, looking for stories. In Kajir Dewari, just opposite of Radisson Blu, I saw her. A little child, almost the same age as the girl here in Delhi, carrying a bucket full of roses, running here and there trying to sell them. After a while, tired of all the running, she sat beside the road with the bucket next to her. I lifted my camera toward her. Seeing it, she grew shy and folded into herself, trying to hide her face. And I clicked this photograph..

In these two years, so much has changed, from a bucket full of flowers to a single rose. Maybe I have changed. Or maybe I am just romanticising the past, telling myself it was better before. Or maybe this story isn’t about me at all!

Maybe it is about her.

The girl I saw in Chittagong, with a bucket full of roses.
And the one I saw in Delhi, holding a single rose in her hand.

Maybe they are the same.

Afterall they sell love. Red love, on the streets…

A man for his loved woman, A son for his mother or father, A husband for his wife, or a wife for her husband….They all buy flowers from them…

But at the age when they are supposed to bloom like flowers, they are selling them. When it should have been a bucket full of dreams, they are running through traffic with a single rose in their hands.

Life is strange.

And still, with responsibilities resting on their little shoulders, they smile, while running through a yellow light, or while someone lifts a camera to them. Maybe that is why the roses look so beautiful in their hands.

Because they are not just selling flowers.
They are in the business of selling love….